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Debate:Does bias impair Wikipedia's reliability? (view source)
Revision as of 15:27, July 31, 2007
, 15:27, July 31, 2007→It's more than bias
==It's more than bias==
==It's more than bias==
Any wiki which intends to report factual information will be limited in its reliability by the individuals who edit it and the direction those individuals take. Even within a system of strict rules designed to avoid misinformation and bias creeping in, you will still have individuals who disagree with each other. Suppose for example you posted a statistic which cannot help but put the African-American community in a positive light; a white separatist editor may demand that you provide adequate citations and references to back up your numbers, or edit your contribution to sound less positive, and in either case he is still within the rules.
Since rule enforcement is also done by editors, the rules are going to be more strongly enforced in proportion to the demographic of the editors. You see this throughout history; where one group holds more political power than another in the nation, the laws will favour the powerful group unless they are also supremely fair. Any wiki will be biased in favour of the kind of people on the internet - they tend to be young men, who are well-versed in the use of technology. Young people are more likely to take traditions for granted and hold radical views, which I suspect is one source of this perceived [[liberal bias]] in Wikipedia - the conservatives there are simply just outnumbered by the young people. Technically-minded individuals these days are also less likely to be religious, so you can expect to find other editors who are openly biased against Christian viewpoints.
Ultimately, there are only so many editors, and topics that don't catch the interest any of them will fall by the wayside, while those that do will reflect the bias of any editor undisciplined enough not to take a neutral stance. --[[User:JonathanDrain|JonathanDrain]] 11:27, 31 July 2007 (EDT)